060205 Mad-Cow Feed Rules Will Be Tightened in U.S

The U.S. probably will enact rules this year to ban the use in animal feed of cattle parts most likely to spread mad-cow disease, putting into effect a proposal announced last year, regulators said.

The Food and Drug Administration will publish by July 1 its final version of revised cattle-feed rules, said Stephen Sundlof, the head of the agency's Center for Veterinary Medicine, in an interview today. The rule will take effect a short time later, perhaps within a month, he said. The FDA announced the draft rules in October.

The revisions will be the first tightening of the rules since the FDA barred feeding cattle parts to cattle in 1997. The FDA has considered and then abandoned stronger measures for preventing the brain-wasting disease, also called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, said Representative Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House panel that oversees the FDA budget.

``We have been operating under rules from 1997, even though our understanding of how BSE is spread has increased dramatically since then,'' DeLauro, of Connecticut, told Acting FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach at a subcommittee meeting today on the agency's budget.

Mad cow disease, which has a fatal human form, appears to spread to cattle and people by eating infected meat. The disease appears to stem from abnormal proteins, called prions, which occur in cattle's small intestines, brains, eyes and spinal cords. The disease robs people of speech and control of their movement, leaving them immobile and mute, and then leading to death.

Ban by Japan

The first U.S. case of mad cow disease was discovered in December 2003, touching off a ban on the nation's beef by Japan, formerly the biggest importer of the product. Japan had only allowed imports to resume in December and then suspended them again in January following the discovery of banned spinal tissue in three boxes of a veal shipment.

Tommy Thompson, then U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, said in January 2004 the FDA would bar cattle from receiving mammal blood in feed because of a theoretical risk of transmitting mad cow disease. Thompson also said the agency would bar feeding litter from chicken pens and table scraps from restaurants to cattle, as they can contain cattle meat.

None of these measures was included in the proposal the FDA released in October, DeLauro said. The FDA instead said it would focus on what it considered the biggest risk, and called for eliminating the brains and spinal cords of cows older than 30 months from animal feed.

The FDA is looking to change how all animals are fed to prevent cases of cattle eating food intended for other animals being exposed to mad cow disease.

The FDA will have a final rule by July 1, von Eschenbach said.

``We have approached this very much from the point of view of risk and concern about the risk and benefit that would come'' from further regulation, he said.

Source: Bloomberg.com

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com